The sudden forced emigration wrenched me from calm and comfortable life of a middle-aged architect into life of an exile in a new land. Everything is upended here, and my task now is to navigate unfamiliar terrain and somehow find my place here.

Amid all of this, I began constructing a private, fairy-tale world hidden from prying eyes, which only my two daughters have access to. The world where the boundaries of possibility dissolve, the feminine fantasyland sprung from the bedtime tales mothers weave for their children, inspired by Russian folklore. Yet, this world is steeped in a profound sense of homesickness.

Russian fairy tales have never been cheerful. Often, they are dark, enigmatic, and unsettling—but always brimming with magic. And so, our story follows suit.

We don’t craft elaborate plots. We simply step into this world—up in the attic of our rented home—and take a photograph, a moment suspended in time, before slipping back out.

In our fantasyland, nothing is permanent. Everything shifts, transforms. Mother, witch, queen; daughter-girl, daughter-child, daughter-doll—each character blending into the next, caught in a constant state of transformation. There is no fixed point, only the shimmering transitions between them. And no end here, even a happy one.

"We are proud to present the Diploma Award to Mari Saxon, whose staged photography evokes a haunting visual narrative that oscillates between memory, performance, and inner myth.

Her series immerses us in carefully constructed domestic scenes where the theatrical and the surreal coexist. Through uncanny juxtapositions of body parts, ritual-like gestures, and painterly lighting, the photographs explore female identity, vulnerability, and the blurred line between reality and dream.

Thank you, Mari, for turning interiors into spaces of tension, transformation, and visual poetry."

____________________________________________________________________________________ Phodar Biennial